Williams: We will be back up there again

Williams F1's chief operations engineer, Rod Nelson believes that the Grove-based outfit will be a lot more competitive in Singapore in two weeks time, when the 2009 F1 season resumes in the 'Lion City'.

Williams endured its least competitive showing of the year last weekend at the Italian Grand Prix, with Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima both struggling with the Toyota-powered FW31.

In the end neither driver made it out of Q1 and then on race day points were a distant dream, with Nakajima eventually coming home tenth and Rosberg 16th, after two unscheduled pit stops cost him time.

Despite a nightmare weekend though, Nelson is confident that the squad will be able to add to its tally next time out and hopefully close in on Toyota in the Constructors' championship – Williams currently lies eight points back in sixth place.

"I am hopeful that we will be back up there again (in Singapore)," said Nelson. "We'll have some new aero upgrade parts on the cars and we hope we will be back scoring points on a regular basis for the last four races of the year.

"(The issue at Monza was that) the majority of circuits throughout the season are considered to be high downforce tracks.

"Spa is a medium downforce track due to its combination of long straights and high speed corners while, with its long straights and mainly low speed corners, Monza is the only low downforce circuit on the calendar. We therefore consider that our resources are better placed concentrating on aero development for the higher downforce tracks.

"It is also one of the circuits where KERS can give a significant advantage and we do not have our KERS online at present."

Williams F1 director of engineering, Patrick Head, meanwhile wasn't at all pleased with the Italian GP weekend - although he did praise Nakajima for battling his way up from 17th to tenth.

"Kazuki did a good day's work today, starting in 17th and finishing in tenth, especially as he not only had bodywork damage but was also suffered a fuel pressure problem, losing him a little top end power. Nico had several problems today causing a number of unscheduled pit stops.

"Although Kazuki drove well though, it is not lost on us that we are too far from the points and where we want to be," Head concluded.

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Sam micheal should takeover the team and boot uncle frank into touch. It seems nowadays Frank is more interested in politics and stopping FOTA than in developing his car or indeed keeping his star driver.